Is this the Enterance?

tabacco · Post by **tabacco** » Sat Jul 26, 2003 1:38 am

Well, traffic used to flow the other way in the treehouse when it was Swiss Family Robinson, so I can kinda understand that, I guess.

SRT_GB · Post by **SRT_GB** » Sat Jul 26, 2003 2:31 am

The thing that really makes me mad is that when it comes to attractions, people will wait in a long line, sometimes even if they don't have to. But when it comes to stores and some restaurants, people will cut off the people that are waiting in line because they're "sick and tired of waiting in lines."

Morrigoon · Post by **Morrigoon** » Sun Jul 27, 2003 6:15 am

At Indy, we have a lovely queue area with many ropes (known as "the digs"). Our standby line gets sent through there. Occasionally, our line will get shorter very quickly, so guests are going through a whole lot of empty queue.

So they take it upon themselves to cut through a few of the ropes - then they come up to us at greeter all upset because they ended up right back there. "Did you go through some ropes?" we ask. "Yes," they admit. "Well then, that's why you went the wrong way, just follow the line and you'll get to the ride"

..."idiot"

Zazu · Post by **Zazu** » Sun Jul 27, 2003 12:53 pm

Freak wrote:

Zazu wrote:

Really stupid guests go to Pete's Garage, turn left into the wings, go wandering around backstage, and end up falling into the water inside the submarine show building. (Oh yes, they do it about twice a year on average!)
I'm suprised that you guys don't have the sub show building boarded up or something being the subs were removed weren't they? Or did DLR only get the subs removed?

The subs have all been scrapped. They can't board up the building though, because there's a large and active maintenance shop inside. Access is also needed to service the filters, pump motors, and ventillating fans inside.

Of course, there's less to do now that they shut off the waterfalls....

Freak · Post by **Freak** » Sun Jul 27, 2003 1:05 pm

^ Oh okay, I see now. Haven't been to WDW in a long time, last time I was there, the Subs were operating. Anyways I don't think it's possible for guests at DLR to find the maintenence bay for the Subs here, plus, ours are all still sitting around. That evokes the ever annoying "When are the subs coming back?" Question... :roll:

I love guests at Indy. I saw one guy go through the entire queue and up into the room with the sun calender. He ended up getting lost and ending up at the exit going, "This doesn't look like the enterance..."

Maybe because its not?

Dante101 · Post by **Dante101** » Sun Jul 27, 2003 1:37 pm

Freak wrote:I don't think it's possible for guests at DLR to find the maintenence bay for the Subs here, plus, ours are all still sitting around. That evokes the ever annoying "When are the subs coming back?" Question...

You can plainly see the maintence bay for the DL subs when you ride the Monorail. It's outside, on your left as you approach It's a Small World. The dry dock is next to the "North Pole" part of the ride.

I've never seen the show building at WDW, but at DL it's just a long cave with a catwalk just above the water and lots of large cracks all along the walls (which made every Subs CM nervous).

For the Submarine Voyage to return to Disneyland, they would have to pump a shitload of money into it, which they are not willing to do. Most of the Subs need a LOT of work done to them. So much work, it seems, that they would fall into the same category as the Skyway. If a certain amount of work needs to be done to a building or conveyence (this wording is not verbatim), then it needs to be made to fit ADA standards.

Word has it that Skyway was shut down because they had to reconfigure each bucket to accomodate open wheelchairs. And I believe each submarine would have had to go through the same process.

And then they went and built the elevator to the Monorail platform. The new concrete base around that elevator extends past where the edge of the Sub dock ended. So if you tried to drive a sub past that, the tail of the sub would hit that concrete as it made it's first turn past the dive bubbles.

I think Subs will reopen the night before Hell freezes over...

BirdMom · Post by **BirdMom** » Sun Jul 27, 2003 6:15 pm

Dante101 wrote:Word has it that Skyway was shut down because they had to reconfigure each bucket to accomodate open wheelchairs. And I believe each submarine would have had to go through the same process.

Skyway shut down because it was a litigation magnet. I was working over on Book when we had the infamous "incident." Fred was at the console on Alice when he heard a thrashing in the big tree next to the building and looks up in time to see this guy in the tree with a gondola heading towards the Matterhorn with it's door swinging open. He immediately called security. In the meanwhile, the gondola went into T-sky station, door open with this kid about 12 years old, black, playing dumb. Two guys in the station immediately pulled him aside and started asking him how he got the door open. The kid was basically "i dunno..." then he started saying that his brother fell out. The T-sky guys didn't believe him until they heard the call over the radio that there was a guy in the tree next to Alice. The kid got carted off to security immediately. In the meantime, security got the guy out of the tree, took him over to CFA and he insisted on being taken to a hospital; he was "injured." Both UCI and Anaheim Memorial e.r.'s said he only had a few minor cuts and scrapes, that there was nothing really wrong with him. In the meantime - on the very same afternoon, ambulance chaser attorney Milton Grimes holds a press conference (you might remember him as Rodney King's lawyer). He announces that this guy's family is suing Disneyland for having "unsafe" rides. When some reporter asked him about how he knew about this incident so quickly, he replied that he just "happenned" to be in the park and that he went to the hospital and offered his services out of the goodness of his heart.

So for a couple of weeks there was a whole lot of press about how the Skyway is unsafe. One of my leads had been working with WDI on researching new ride systems to replace the old gondolas, but after all the bad publicity, that got thrown out the window. The company decided to close the ride immediately. The kicker was that because of all the adverse publicity, some nice couple sent a videotape to the park's legal department that put Grimes and this kid in a whole different light. In Fantasyland, our theory was that this incident was a set up. This couple were on the Skyway going in the opposite direction - from Tommorrowland to Fantasyland and they were videotaping, and they got the whole thing on tape...they caught the guy leaning out, fussing with the door until he got it open, and then they got him playing, sticking one foot out the door, then the other, until he finally jumped out over the tree. What was priceless, was that Disney legal called this guy and Grimes in for a "settlement" conference and Grimes kept insisting that the ride was unsafe and that his client suffered grevious injuries. Then came the "are you sure there's something you're not telling us?" and of course they wouldn't admit anything. Disney legal then ran the videotape and the lawsuit miraculously went away. However, the decision was already made to get rid of the ride (cost-cutting anyway) so they went ahead and shut it down. Maybe the intention was to find a way down the road to make the gondolas tamper-proof and then re-open. But thanks to that lower-than-low Grimes, the ride is gone.

Dante101 · Post by **Dante101** » Sun Jul 27, 2003 8:27 pm

The decision to shut down the Skyway was made long before this accident - I remember distinctly, as my Tomorrowland coworkers worked the ride. This accident had nothing to do with it. Similar 'skyway' rides have been shut down nationwide, before this silly "accident." And I remember thinking, "Oh great - now everyone's gonna think they shut down the ride because of the accident."

Word leaked out about the ADA requirement issue, and how it would look bad for the Park to announce they were closing a ride rather than bring it up to code.

Dante101 · Post by **Dante101** » Sun Jul 27, 2003 11:53 pm

The Skyway at WDW has been closed for years.

techie-13 · Post by **techie-13** » Mon Jul 28, 2003 10:17 am

I used to work a Skyway at a different park. I heard all sorts of stories of people doing stupid things during the ride. I also know that on the type of cabins we had on ours, you could pop the door open from inside the cabin, but it would take a lot of force and you'd have to know where to apply it.

I did hear the story once of a day when we had a "company picnic" for a bunch of marines. One of the security sargents heard some counting coming from a cabin as it was about to pass overhead. He looked up to see a marine doing chin ups while hanging onto the back of the cabin. :shock:

Regarding ADA, most of the guests who required wheelchairs and scooters understood that to ride the Skyway on a busy day would be round trip. We did have one family that would come by every couple of weeks on a slow day and they figured out a way to get a wheelchair over with them. We would hold two cabins in the station. Load the mother and the son (who used the chair) into the second cabin. The dad would then fold the chair and he and the daughter would hop into the first cabin. We'd send them on their way and Dad would get there first and have the chair ready for the son when he arrived. They got to be very quick at this by the end of summer!